As society becomes more and more mobile, the numbers of roadside restaurants and other drive-in establishments providing beverages has burgeoned. There has been a concomitant increase in the number of take-out orders of beverages such as hot coffee and tea. The containers for these beverages usually consist of cardboard, plastic or styrofoam cups, many of which are fitted with cardboard or plastic covers to prevent the container contents from sloshing about and spilling as the consumer carries the container to his car. Once seated, the customer can then remove the cover and consume the contents of the cup.
In many cases, the customer may wish to drink from the cup and yet still be protected from spillage in the event that he or the container is jostled by a nearby person or by the swaying and bumping motions of the car. To this end, a variety of different container covers have been proposed which are intended to minimize the incidence of spillage due to the "loose water effect." Usually these covers take the form of cardboard or plastic disks which engage over the rim of the cup. A tab is provided in the cover which can be stripped away to provide an opening through the cover so that the customer can drink the contents of the cup. The presence of the remainder of the cover minimizes spillage due to the sloshing of the liquid contents which can only escape through that relatively small opening.
While that prior type cover does alleviate the problem to some extent, it still does not eliminate it. If the container happens to be tilted as the customer is drinking, even a slight jostling of the container will cause the liquid contents to splash up through the opening whereupon it may spill on the customer's clothes and, if it is a hot drink, burn his face or hands.
Other cup covers of which we are aware are provided with upstanding drinking spouts which the customer can place between his lips while consuming the contents of the cup. While that type of cover is satisfactory for a cold drink, it is not suitable for dispensing a hot drink such as hot coffee. This is because one normally uses his lips to sense the temperature of a drink because the lips are the most sensitive part of the mouth. Actually one tests whether or not a particular drink is too hot by gingerly sipping the beverage at the rim of the cup, taking great care to allow only a very minimum amount of liquid to pass between the lips.
Such care is not possible when drawing in liquid through a spout because one cannot exercise close control over the amount of liquid being ingested. By the time the customer finds out that the beverage is too hot, it is too late because he has already drawn in an excessive amount of the liquid which thereupon proceeds to burn his mouth.
Other more elaborate covers have been proposed. However, these usually comprise multiple pieces which must be made separately, inventoried separately and installed in the cup separately, making them excessively expensive and inconvenient to stock and to use.
Often also when a container is practically empty, the customer may place the container on some sort of surface such as a seat or dashboard and, thereupon, due to vibrations of the automobile, the container may tip over. Even with the aforesaid prior covers, the rest of the container contents is free to spill out through the drinking openings in those covers.